Instant Pot Hünkar Beğendi (Sultan’s Delight, a Turkish Beef Stew on Eggplant Purée)

After three weeks in San José, we returned to Malaga via Granada where we met with Andy and Mark and stayed one night. We then drove to Malaga for 11 nights in the same flat we rented last year. We saw our friends in La Carihuela often but we enjoyed being in Malaga Centre. It is a vibrant city full of wonderful restaurants and bars. Then we flew from Malaga to Istanbul.

Here are some of our photos from Granada and our 11 days in Malaga:

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We arrived in Istanbul one day before embarking on our Viking Cruise. We met our dear friends from Arizona, Paul and T there and they were kind enough to arrange a private walking tour on our first full day in Istanbul. We had lunch at Galeyan, a traditional Turkish restaurant specializing in cuisine from the Ottoman Empire, recommended by our delightful guide. We asked him to order a selection of traditional dishes so we could taste everything. This is one of the excellent dishes we sampled that day and we were smitten. The beef is soft and full of flavour on top of a creamy eggplant purée. We had never tasted anything like this before. Of course, I asked our guide to type the name of the dish into my Phone so that I could recreate it when we returned home. I checked several recipes and came up with this one. Turkish food is generally not spicy hot but it is packed with flavour from their wonderful collection of herbs and spices. The recipe name translates to Sultan’s Delight and it dates back to the Ottoman Empire. Not everyone loves eggplant, JT included, but I ask you to open your mind because this is like no eggplant you’ve ever tasted. We couldn’t get enough of it. 

Serves 2-4

Beef Stew:

Ingredients:

• 30 mL oil
• 500 g beef, cubed
• 30 mL of oil
• 15 g butter
• 200 g sweet onion
• 170 g red pepper (1 medium)
• 5 g red pepper paste
• 5 g tomato paste
• 5 g roasted garlic purée
• 2 tomatoes, skinned and seeded
• 125 mL beef broth
• 125 mL hot water
• 1 g each, salt, pepper, Aleppo pepper flakes, thyme

Directions:

1. Combine the beef broth and water and set aside. Add the oil to the Instant Pot and set to Sauté on high. Brown the meat on all sides (you may need to do this in batches so they don’t crowd each other and steam instead of brown). Deglaze with a little of the stock/water mixture and set the Pressure Cook lid onto the pot and lock. Choose the pressure cook setting on High for 15 minutes. Manual release the steam and remove the meat carefully and set aside.
2. Add the oil and butter to the Instant Pot and set on Sauté on High. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Return the meat to the pot and add the red peppers and stir well.
3. Add the pepper paste, tomato paste, garlic purée and the broth and water, stir well. Add the salt, pepper, Aleppo pepper flakes and thyme and stir well.
4. Secure the lid onto the Instant Pot and choose Pressure Cook Setting on Low for 30 minutes. Manual steam release and give the stew a good stir. Then set the Instant Pot to Sauté on high to allow much of the liquid to evaporate. 
5. Serve hot with the Eggplant Purée.

Eggplant

Ingredients:

• 300 g eggplant
• 10 g of butter
• 10 g flour
• 63 mL of cold milk
• 100 g grated cheese (I used Mozzarella)
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Pierce the eggplants with a fork in several places.
2. Bake the eggplants until soft. Set aside in a covered bowl for 30 minutes.
3. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and cook for a minute or so.
4. Slowly pour in the milk and whisk until smooth and thickened. 
5. Add the cheese and stir well to combine. Set aside.
6. Peel the eggplant and chop it roughly and add it to the cheese sauce. Purée well with an immersion blender until smooth. You may wish to press this through a fine sieve for a really creamy sauce. Serve warm.

The creamy and luscious texture of the eggplant purée is a wonderful foil to the saucy meat.

 

This is supposed to serve four people, and we did have leftovers of the meat, there was nothing left of the eggplant. For four, I would definitely use 1 kg of meat and a lot more eggplant!

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Türkish Kebabs

I have been struggling to get a good photo of these kebobs since our return to Toronto in December last year. The lighting is brutal. I did get some specialty lighting for this instance but it’s not exactly what I had hoped for, it still has that fake lighting tinge. So I am stuck with winter lighting for my photos.

This recipe came about from a trip to a local Türkish restaurant where we ordered these wonderful kebabs. They are packed with flavour and the toppings don’t hurt. In Türkiye, they would serve this with pickled onions but we find them too strong so I made pickled cucumbers and a tasty yogurt harissa sauce. It was a wonderful meal.

When I am in Türkiye, I will be purchasing the authentic Türkish kebab skewers which are actually about 2.5 cm or 1 inch wide, as well as a kebab press as I hope to make these for the freezer in large quantities. Türkish kebabs should not touch the grill, they should cook above the grill, soaking up the smoke from the grill but without caramelizing the meat. The flat wide skewers allow you to pile on the meat with all the inclusions and not have bits fall off into the fire.

I should have put the meat in front, but because my skewers are not wide enough, we had to rest the kebabs on the grill to cook. And if I am being completely honest, we were too hungry. They are sooo darn good.

Türkish kebabs

Makes about 1200 g of kebab meat mixture.

For the original recipe, please click here.

Ingredients:

• 454 g ground lamb
• 454 g ground veal
• 1 roasted pepper, skinned, seeded and roughly chopped
• 1 sweet onion, roughly chopped
• 10 g roasted garlic purée
• 1/2 bunch of cilantro, stems, and leaves
• 1.5 g salt
• 1.5 g black pepper
• 10 g sumac
• 5 g ground coriander
• 2 g ground cumin
• 1.5 g sweet paprika

Directions:

1. Add all of the ingredients into the large bowl of your food processor and process until smooth and all of the ingredients are evenly chopped and distributed in the meat mixture.
2. Form 100 g of the meat mixture around each kabab skewer and rest of a flat surface. Use immediately or freeze individually on a flat surface.
3. Cook on a grill at 350° F until the internal temperature is 160° F.
4. Serve with unleavened flatbread and a pickled cucumber with a harissa yogurt sauce.

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Unleavened Turkish Lavash

Part of our escape from winter next year will be going on a luxury cruise from Istanbul, Turkey to Athens, Greece. I wanted to become more familiar with Turkish food so we went to a Turkish restaurant and loved it so much I thought we should experiment with a few recipes. I made these lavash to go with Adana Kabobs (lamb and beef kabobs) for dinner one night. To say it was a success is an understatement, they were extremely delicious! I can’t wait to try this in Turkey next year.

Soft and chewy, the perfect texture to wrap a brightly-flavoured Turkish kabab.

Makes 6 small-medium-sized lavash

This is a combination of several recipes.

Ingredients:

• 250 g bread flour
• 4 g salt
• 100 g water
• 15 g Greek yogurt
• 30 g EVOO

Directions:

1. Combine flour and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer and give it a quick mix.
2. In another container, mix the water, yogurt, and oil. While the mixer is on low speed, pour in the wet yogurt mixture. Mix until the yogurt mixture is entirely combined with the flour. Allow to sit for 10 minutes.
3. After 10 minutes, continue to knead the dough until no longer sticky and is firm and smooth (10-15 minutes).
4. Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes.
5. Divide the dough into six equal portions and roll out each one to an oval or a circle adding flour as necessary, if sticky.
6. Using a cast iron frying pan, on medium-high heat, cook each lavash until golden but not hard.
7. Serve warm with kabobs.

These are the kababs we had in a restaurant. I am hoping to get the appropriate kabab skewers in Turkey next year!

Notes:

• Freeze lavash in a ziplock bag with most of the air removed. To reheat, slightly dampened from frozen on a medium-heat frying pan.

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Yanyana Tavasi (Turkish meaning beside eachother)

As you know, we at Kitcheninspirations have become obsessed with Turkish recipes because we are planning our trip to Turkey next year. We really want to get the flavour of the country and from what we have sampled, we absolutely LOVE the flavours! This recipe came across my Instagram and I was immediately smitten. It is a perfect sharing meal, the round pan is filled with highly seasoned meat, with each vegetable surrounding the meat in its own quadrant. It is beautiful and perfect for a long dinner party filled with great conversation. The original recipe uses lamb but our guests don’t eat lamb so I substituted pork. You’ll need a fattier meat so that the flavours can develop in the pan juices. I can guarantee that this is absolutely worth the effort. I used my large Paella pan (about 33 cm or 13-inch diameter) and it worked out well but if you have a large, deep-dish pizza pan, it’s more like the original in this video.

It seems like a lot but it really is not. Four of us nearly polished it off in one sitting. I had enough leftovers for one, but I stretched it into two by adding more vegetables.

Yanyana Tavasi

The recipe is originally from Meliz Cooks

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 45 mL olive oil, divided
• 30 mL Turkish sweet red pepper paste*
• 50 mL milk
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp ground Aleppo pepper
• 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 kg boneless lamb or pork shoulder/neck fillet, cut into tiny pieces
• 1 head of garlic (about 10-12 cloves), peeled and left whole
• 1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt flakes
• 3/4 teaspoon coarse black pepper
• 1 bag pearl onions, peeled
• 1 zucchini, chopped into 2 cm pieces
• 1 medium eggplant, chopped into 2 cm pieces
• 1 red bell pepper, cored and chopped into 2cm pieces
• 1 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 2cm cubes
• 3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped into 2 cm pieces
• 2 Bay leaves
• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Combine 30 mL olive oil, Turkish sweet red pepper paste, milk, paprika, smoked paprika, and Aleppo pepper flakes in the base of a large medium-high-sized ovenproof pan (similar to a deep dish pizza pan or a paella pan). Add the meat and the whole garlic and massage the spice mix into the meat, allow to marinate while you prep the veg (about 60 minutes or a maximum of 4 hours). Once the meat has marinated, season it with salt and pepper.
2. Push the meat into the centre of the pan and place each veg in its own quadrant around the meat (remember, this is a “side by side” dish). Once all of the veg are placed around the meat, brush them with the remaining 15 mL of olive oil and sprinkle with the oregano and place the bay leaves into the meat. Cover the pan with parchment and wrap it tightly with foil and place it into your oven for one hour at 350° F convection (with fan).
3. Once the hour has lapsed, remove the pan from the oven and increase the oven temperature to 425° F. Remove the parchment and foil carefully from the pan and baste the vegetables with the juices from the meat (using a large spoon, press the meat down gently to fill up the spoon with the delicious pan juices and baste). Once you have basted all of the vegetables, return the pan to the 425° F oven for 30 minutes (trying to crisp the veggies a bit).
4. Serve with any type of flatbread or lavash or mayasiz bazlama (yeast-free Turkish flatbreads).

The vegetables really cook down, as does the meat. It wasn’t nearly as greasy as I thought it would be, the meat let off a lot of juices for the vegetables to cook in nicely.

Lay a piece of parchment over the top and then secure it with heavy-duty foil and wrap the foil tightly around the pan.

*I didn’t have Turkish sweet red pepper paste on hand so I used my Hungarian Sweet Red Pepper Paste. You can bet that it’s on my list for Turkey!

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